Barely bearable gross-out act

Philippa Hawker

HUGH Jackman with a pair of testes on his neck, a feature he seems sublimely unaware of; in fact Kate Winslet, on a date with him at a restaurant, is the only one who seems to notice. Halle Berry, on a dare, rushes in to blow out the candles on a blind child's birthday cake. Anna Faris, in search of the ultimate proof of love, asks her boyfriend to defecate on her.

A series of interconnected short films follows a washed-up producer as he pitches hilarious and insane story lines featuring some of the biggest stars in hollywood.

Full synopsis

These details pretty much convey the tone of Movie 43, a gross-out sketch comedy that is credited to 13 directors and nine writers, although the presiding figure is Peter Farrelly (There's Something About Mary, Shallow Hal). He has somehow managed to persuade a cast of well-known Hollywood actors to set aside a day or two to take part in these short films: Jackman, Winslet, Berry, Richard Gere, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber and Emma Stone, to name but a few.

Quite what they were thinking when they agreed to take part in this is anyone's guess, and it's debatable whether the presence of so many A-listers makes the experience more or less bearable. The items are loosely linked by the figure of Dennis Quaid, as a manic screenwriter pitching ideas to a studio executive (Greg Kinnear).

Schreiber and Watts bring conviction to one of the rare sketches that actually has an idea to explore: the tale of parents determined to give their son a humiliating educational experience. Most of the other segments are tests of endurance. Movie 43 isn't the low point of Western civilisation that some US reviews seem to be suggesting; but it really doesn't have much going for it.